AAwk12

I learned a lot this week. Having a professional master to compare my mastering attempts to was extremely helpful.

My first attempt I did without a reference point and was feeling pretty good about it. But as soon as I listened to the Eden version it became extremely apparent that the sound I had was way too boxy and the snare had no definition. So I started from scratch.

I discovered that having the attack at fairly fast level and more importantly the release time as fast as possible when focusing on the snare really brought out the definition and sharpness. This also resolved the boxy sound issue.

Although i think I achieved a sound that resembled the Eden Master to a nice detail, I was no where near getting the same gain levels but attributed this to their use of high end analogue equipment and admitted defeat.

Overall though I am really pleased with what I achieved.

And here are the comparative Masters.


Un Mastered


My Mastering


Mastering Done By Eden Studios

THE DREAM!!!

I had a dream last night that was so deep, so profound that I felt the need to share it with you all. Indeed I dare say that JOHN CAGE himself came to me from the either to bring me a powerful and moving message.

In my dream were two fellow classmates. To protect their identities I shall simply call them Benjamin Probert and Jacob Morris.

The dream begins....

Jake was explaining to Ben and myself that he liked listening to CD's of silence. So Ben picked up a blank CD and inserted into the CD burner as though he was intending to burn Jake some music. BUT instead he took the CD strait out again and placed it within a CD player, turned the volume to maximum and pressed play. Upon listening to the resounding silence, Jake sat in complete awe and exclaimed in a breathless voice "incredible!'

End dream.

I hope my account of this dream has had as a deep and moving effect on you as the reader, as it was for me to experience it. Word up Johnny C!

AAwk11

I chose my 'Electro grunge' mix for the mastering exercise this week. I really enjoyed using the mc5 compressor to boost the sound. I particularly focused on the mid range as it was suggested in my comments that my mixes seem to be lacking in this area. I also managed to get a much more defined Kick, snare, bass and hi-hat sound. I used an EQ to target a specific frequency in the bass which was detracting from the overall sound.

Here's the mastered Mp3

Mastered Mix

Here is the un mastered version for comparison

Un mastered mix

CCwk11

Conversations between SATAN and GOD

This week was a 'collaborative' effort between David Dowling and myself. Using the network, I sent Note Data to Dave's Patch which he then converted into control Data. He used the data to manipulate Control values before sending it back to my patch. Although it was sent from my patch (as with the original note data) to the A1 in Cubase, I chose to add some extra interest to David's control data. I had 5 choices of variable expression modules to further manipulate Dave's Data. This way it became a pseudo 'competition' between the two of us. This process yielded some interesting sonic results as well as some extremely cheesy and humorous ones.

Here are some pic's and the patches.

Dave's Patch


My Patch


SATAN - Luke Digance v GOD - David "I actually taught God how to play guitar" Dowling

Forum wk11

Simon Whitelock aka 'DJ JACK TO THE MAXXX!!!!'

In a so called Post-Modernist era, is the use of samples within dance and hip-hop music taking music to a new level, paying homage to the original artist, or simply an appropriation? 'DJ JACK TO THE MAX' was in two minds on the matter. On one hand he felt it is an appropriation and that it is just a matter of whether or not the artist is found out to be "jacking someones work" as to whether he can have a musical respect for them. On the other he felt that there is some level of artistry in it, although he was fairly vague on his description. Ultimately I feel it is a matter of whether an artist is using a catchy hook to otherwise sell a standard drum beat or if they are expanding upon a section of music to create something new and exciting.

Nathan Shea



The use of lo-fi recording techniques was one of the key components extrapolated from Nathan's deconstruction of Death Metal music. It was hypothesised that this is related to the writers of the music within the Black Metal genre having a hate for practically every element of modern society.

John Delaney

John's focus of interest was to deconstruct non-diagetic sounds in the sound design of films, in particular the psychoacoustic reactions of fear. Dark Ambient music was his primary focus of analysis (deconstruction.) This choice was of genre was due to several of the main composers in the genre were also sound designers by profession. John came to the conclusion that without the visual stimulation, the music composed has no psychoacoustic result of fear within the listener. Although there was no comparative of the sounds being used in conjunction with fear invoking visuals, The music played to us certainly ceased to invoke any fear within me personally. It was however indusive to creating visuals within my imagination.

References

Stephen Whittington. “Construction and Deconstruction.” Workshop presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, Thursday 24th of May, 2007.

John Delany. “Construction and Deconstruction.” Student talk presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, Thursday 24th of May, 2007.

Simon Whitelock. “Construction and Deconstruction.” Student talk presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, Thursday 24th of May, 2007.

Nathan Shea. “Construction and Deconstruction.” Student talk presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, Thursday 24th of May, 2007.

CCwk10

This week I had to spend a long time just cleaning the patch up before I could structure the UI. And as always when encapsulating and tidying bugs were created that I had to fix. But in the end I got there. Sadly it isn't as impressive my fellow students but hopefully I will make up for this in the next couple of weeks.

The use of the counter with Forward and Reverse playback was an idea taken from Dave's patch but the rest is original.

CCwk10

AAwk10

As I was away for the actual lesson this week I got David Dowling to show me how to use the avalon and then teamed up with Ben Probert for the actual recording. Thanks to you both for the help.

Although not nessasary for the Piano I do like the sound of the Avalon. It is slightly warmer in tone.

Any way heres the comparison files

C24 'clean'

Avalon Pre Amp

Forum week 10

Freddy May



This talk took inspiration from Michael Paul Stavrou's book "mixing with your mind." Freddy attempted to deconstruct the most famous songs of all time to annalyse what exactly it is about them that makes them popular.

To begin with he utilized a formula for writing a successful happy song. The formulae being P+Pos+T+BPM+I=happy pop song. Now I could extenuate what this formulae means as Freddy did, but I think I'd rather focus on the inherent problems I find with this approach to music.

The modern Pop world today is the epitome of formularised music, yet its hold on the industry, although immense is not absolute and in many regards waning. In the advent of the downloadable music generation pop artists are finding it harder than ever to make CD sales, while artists who make an effort to expand music beyond a basic formulae and endeavor to express themselves creatively earn the respect from an fan base who bore of formulaic music and want something more to what they listen too. This fan base would make more of an effort to buy the CD and support the artist too from musical respect.

On another aspect though I did really appreciate the Psycho-acoustic ideas presented within Freddy’s talk. The ideas of certain frequencies/pitch and tempo/BPM resulting in various physiological or psychological responses is highly fascinating. It’s something I look forward to looking into more in the future.

Dragos Nastasie

Dragos analysed various pieces of music which had elements/ layers which constructed and/or deconstructed as they progressed. He also looked at the way in which this process changed the feel of the piece. I think the examples he chose really illustrated this.

Matt Mazzone

Matt deconstructed some work he did for an advertising company, which basically resulted in him explaining the processes he went through to create the sound for a few adverts. I can understand why one of the adverts one an award and think the way matt approached the sounds for each add was very clever.

References

Steven Whittington. “Forum – Week 10 – Construction and Deconstruction." Workshop presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 17th May, 2007.

Frederick May. “Forum – Week 10 – Construction and Deconstruction." Student talk presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 17th May, 2007.

Dragos Nastasie. “Forum – Week 10 – Construction and Deconstruction." Student talk presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 17th May, 2007.

Matt Mazzone. “Forum – Week 10 – Construction and Deconstruction." Student talk presented at EMU space, Level 5 Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 17th May, 2007.

Pic References

Michael Paul Stavrou 2007. Mixing with your mind. http://www.mixingwithyourmind.com/ 17 May 2007.

Audio Arts week 9

This week I think I got a lot more out of the mixing process as I took a bit more creative licence upon the song. Although instead of doing three 20 second mixes I did one 60second mix but put a lot more into it so I hope thats ok.

It actually sounds like I've done less work to it than I have but thats cuase I took more of a layering approach so that all the sounds a very subtle but complement each other and fill in the spaces (or at least thats what I aimed for.)

I call this my Electronic Indie mix cause it has a Indi rock/grunge sort of a sound but with slight electronic edges where I cut up some samples from the original recordings.

I'm also much happier with the drum sound I got. This is due to the use aux tracks with reverb and panning them at different locations within the mix so the MIDI sounds like theres more of a room sound.

The use of Amplitube on an Aux with some of the drum tracks helped give it that subtle electronic edge. I also sent the vocals to an Aux track with Amplitube to give the same sort of sound that Ben achieved in his mix, but then set them so they were just complementing the vocals rather than being the main focal point.

Any way, enough ranting.. here it is..


Drama Queen-Electronic Indie Mix

CCwk9

It took me forever to do what I wanted to do and once again it sounds pretty abstract but the pieces are slowly coming together.




CCwk9 mp3

CCwk9 zip file of patch

Forum week 9

Tristan Louth-Robins

Alvin Lucier


Alvin Lucier has been the basis for Tristan's masters’ work. Lucier is an insightful man who shied away from formal musical traditions under the influence of people such as John Cage and Merce Cunningham and chose to take a different approach to music. In fact he chose to disregard what is typically classified as music all together, and instead chose to focus on sound and the behavior of sound.

'I am sitting in a small room' is a very interesting piece. For me the nature of the piece is that the first listen is quite interesting to hear progress. The layers of harmonics that develop over time have brilliant timbre qualities. Upon future listens however the 'mystery' of the piece vanishes and is not nearly quite so captivating.

Tristan's piece 'tea-pot' was quite clever adaptation of Alvin Luciers ‘I am sitting in a room.’ Although the composer in me couldn't help but want to place order upon what was occurring. I had the idea of discovering the particular frequencies of multiple teapots, and organising them in a particular scale. Then use a MIDI device to control the volume level from each of the teapots so that essentially a musical instrument was created and you could play the tea pots like a piano for instance. Seb also suggested the possibility of having objects designed to have particular resonant frequencies so an exact scale could be constructed. My interest in this idea is due to the inherent issues of timbre limitations of synthesised sounds compared to natural acoustics.

I was also highly fascinated by the Tristan’s use of vibrating salad bowls to create various harmonics. Tristan’s experiments with creating various shapes through the use of frequencies ties into another branch in this area which highly fascinates me called Cymatics, which indecently is accredited to influencing Alvin Lucier.

Cymatics

Although put rather crudely, the suggestion of looking into human resonance was interesting but more because it reminded me of another theory which seems to tie in with all of Tristan’s research. An idea in Quantum physics which on a very basic level equates to “all matter is energy condensed to a slow vibration.” This idea has fascinated me ever since I discovered it in high school.

Overall Tristan’s research closely ties in with a lot of personal interests of mine and I look forward to discovering more from him as he continues.

References

Tristan Louth-Robins. “Music Technology Forum – Week 9 – Tristan's Masters' study - Alvin Lucier” Student Talk presented at EMU Space, Level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 3rd May, 2007.


Pic References


Makanna, Phil. 1965. 'Music for a Solo Performer.' http://emfinstitute.emf.org/exhibits/luciersolo.html (10 March 2007).

Jenny,Hans. 1963 'Cymatics' http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cymatics%2Ccomplex.jpg (10 March 2007).

CC Wk 8

I spent way too long working on this patch, but that was my own fault. On the plus side i have figured out a lot of things and developed a better idea of what I'm doing for the project. Overall the Piece sounds pretty abstract but I plan to go back over it and break it down into sections and layer the different sounds. At the moment all the automation gives too much variance and it needs to be broken up into sections. I think the use of recording sections and then playing them back at specific times could prove a useful.

Any way i need sleep so heres my patch, recording (when I find out how to record all the automation in Reason,) and pics.

CCwk8zip

CCwk8music

Audio Arts wk8

Mixing

This weeks Audio Arts proved a challenge. The main issue was trying to get MIDI drums to sound semi descent. For all of the mixes I used the Vocal track as a guide, but due to some very bad guitar on the same track as the vocals, I decided that it was only important to make sure the song fitted around the vocals but not actually worry about how the vocals sounded. I kept some of the basic guitar melody but decided not to have two guitars strumming as I preferred a more 'bare' sound to accentuate the bass guitar and kick drum.

For the first example I focussed primarily on getting a tight bass drum and used the bottom end of the bass guitar to fill out the sound. I really like the way these two complemented each other and brought body to the mix. I also like the sound I got for the crash. To get all these sounds I used EQ. I felt that compression would kill an already flat sound.

Part one with Vocal track

Part one without Vocal track


The second example I really tried to get sizzle from the ride cymbal and to perfect the hi-hat sound. I was originally pleased with my snare sound but after listening to Will's I realise I could have tweaked it some more. I used amplitude on one of the electric guitars but left the other clean as I felt that otherwise they competed for space in the mix too much and didn't leave room for the vocals.

Part 2 with vocals

Part 2 without vocals

Finally I waited for the end of the song to experiment with Amplitude on the two extra guitar parts which were brought in. I tried to make these parts really crescendo the ending of the song. The first electric guitar part I enjoyed giving a U2 style sound with the delay. The solo electric guitar livened up with some a good distorted crunch sound, but I found that the solo dragged on for too long. To counter this problem I automated volume so that that the resulting sound was that off someone playing with the volume nob on their guitar.

Part 3 with vocals

Part 3 without vocals

Week 8 Forum

Gender in music tech take 2


Bradley Leffler

Bradley discussed the possibility that music is gender specific due to marketing. In particular he focussed on the difference between a boy band marketed to 15-year-old girls and Heavy music generally being all male as well but appealing to a male audience. Yet he felt that the more technological the music got the further the ability to separate gender specific connotations, to the point of even being dehumanised. He used Kraftwerk as his primary example of this.

Laura Gadd

Laura also felt the music tech is not a gender specific discipline, although she did not go as far as to account the possibility of dehumanising it. She expanded upon the idea of gender within mainstream popular music, using specific examples of Pink, Kylie Minogue and Eminem. These specific examples backed her point, but it was quickly disputed that these are media conceptualised images portraying masculine and feminine roles. I agree. Amy broke down male lyricism as angry and female as emotional but as also stated there are numerous examples of the exact opposite. Ultimately these are just stereotypical perceptions created socially that should be challenged so we can reach a point of understanding that expression is a part of being human and emotions and approach to expression is illegitimate to gender.

Ben Cakebread

Ben chose to focus on Freddie Mercury, the lead singer from the glam rock group 'Queen.' Due to the sexual ambiguity of the band and the open gay lifestyle of Freddie, there was a general disliking by what Ben described as "cock rock Audiences." But in the end Queen managed to appeal to these audiences and become one of the most famous bands of their time. This is attributed by Ben to their adaptation of what could be deemed as more 'masculine' song writing styles within their traditional musical style. Which I feel further enforces my argument that gender/sexuality have no real impact on artistic expression of emotions, but rather it is the artist who choses how best to express themselves.

Peter Kelly

Peter summed up my feelings towards gender within music by using various historical examples of cultural attitudes being the prevalent force in people’s attitudes towards various issues including gender. These attitudes were quite frequently dictated by powerful forces of the time such as religion. Peter felt that the way to change these stereotypes was through advertising influencing social ideas. I understand his reasoning for this, but in my opinion that is already happening and quite often can be used in a negative as well as a positive way. Also I believe that no one has the right to dictate to anyone what is right or wrong (yes I am aware of the irony in that statement.) I feel to enlighten people about these social ideals so they are free to see through them and question gender, morality etc in there own way is a far more inductive towards positive mind-sets. Although varying views and opinions still need to be available for understanding of those questioning them.

References

Stephen Whittington. “Music Technology Forum – Week 8 – Gender in Music Technology, can you tell the difference?” Workshop presented at EMU Space, Level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 3rd May, 2007.

Bradley Leffler. “Music Technology Forum – Week 8 – Gender in Music Technology, can you tell the difference?” Student Talk presented at EMU Space, Level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 3rd May, 2007.

Laura Gadd. “Music Technology Forum – Week 8 – Gender in Music Technology, can you tell the difference?” Student Talk presented at EMU Space, Level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 3rd May, 2007.

Ben Cakebread. “Music Technology Forum – Week 8 – Gender in Music Technology, can you tell the difference?” Student Talk presented at EMU Space, Level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 3rd May, 2007.

Peter Kelly. “Music Technology Forum – Week 8 – Gender in Music Technology, can you tell the difference?” Student Talk presented at EMU Space, Level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide, 3rd May, 2007.